Carrion Sneakthief Coat of Mercy

Carrion Sneakthief Coat of Mercy spreads across the table like a dark living thing, a dusk-black silhouette stitched from scavenged leather and weathered wool. Its hood pools forward with a reluctant sag, as if rain itself remembers where it’s been, and the fur lining along the collar flickers with a pale, almost fishbone-white sheen when a lamp catches it just so. The fabric carries a whisper of textures—rough grain under the fingertips, a slick gloss along the sleeve where old blood and oil once baked into the seam, and a delicate grid of copper rivets that catch the candlelight like a constellation of small questions. On the shoulders, bone-white motifs trace a quiet pattern of carrion birds mid-swoop, a reminder of mercy delivered in the margins, not the center. The clasp at the throat is a mercifully small oval, carved with a sigil that looks half like a cradle and half like a blade, a paradox stitched into metal. Whispers say the coat was sewn in the shadow of a city’s healing houses, by hands that believed mercy could be more practical than pious, more tactical than sentimental. The lore threads it tight between mercy and stealth: a garment meant for eyes that do not wish to draw swords, for feet that know the rhythm of a patrol and the value of silence. Some say it carries a memory, a faint echo of the thief who wore it first—the kind of memory that nudges you to pause before drawing a blade, to doubt the price of a favor, to weigh mercy against prudence. The coat’s pockets feel oddly flat yet significant, as if they mouth quiet possibilities—an extra vial here, a folded map there, a note with a name crossed out and a new name written in its place. If you listen close, the lining hums with a note of restraint, as though the garment itself compels restraint, and in the heat of a skirmish it seems to temper impulsive will with a measured breath. In practice, the coat is a companion to those who hunt in the margins. It doesn’t shout power; it earns it slowly, by letting a wearer slip through guards and corridors with a calm, practiced grace. Stealth comes easier, the kind that makes a backstab feel like a careful handshake rather than a blade in the dark. The wearer finds that doors open a touch more quietly, purses near a guard’s hip seem to loosen their grip, and a tense moment can be measured in a heartbeat saved. It doesn’t turn a character into a hero, but it tilts a story toward mercy in places where mercy could alter the balance of a city’s fate. Prices travel widely, of course, drifted by river winds and the gossip of markets. I watched a trader pivot between risk and reward at Saddlebag Exchange, where the coat’s value was discussed not in rough coin but in a currency of silences and small favors. The grin that crept across the trader’s face suggested the broker understood the delicate calculus: a piece that changes how someone moves through a room changes what that room thinks of you. The coat, with its weight of history and potential, becomes a character all its own in the larger narrative—a talisman that asks its wearer to choose mercy again and again, even when the path is easiest to walk alone.